Best of the West ELR

4/7/22 19:34 Joe and I arrived at our hotel in Hermiston, OR, and after meeting up with a couple of my tribe for a quick slice of pizza and a single bottle of beer, we crashed, exhausted from the 13.5-hour drive of 864 miles through three states. We would zero our rifles in the morning and then see if we could be of any assistance setting up for the competition. The weather guessers were calling for high winds all weekend which could make things interesting.

4/8/22 06:00 Joe Cabigas, Mark Miller, Bruce Baum, and I met in the hotel’s breakfast area. During a hearty breakfast of biscuits and gravy, sausage, eggs, waffles, and fruit juice, we discussed the upcoming event and formed what I would describe as a battle plan. It’s always good to have a plan when you’re going into battle. We arrived at the “sight in” range reasonably early. As we pulled up, I noticed a Dodge pickup was already sitting there idling, most likely waiting for someone else to arrive. I parked and walked over to the vehicle introducing myself to John Beloit (the newest member of my tribe). He was waiting for Kasey Jones to arrive and make the final tweaks to a brand new rifle so he could partake in the Best of The West ELR event in the morning. We all took turns shooting for the next hour, making last-minute-

-adjustments. We all had reasons for needing to shoot that morning, mine being I had just cleaned my rifle before leaving Vegas. I wanted to foul the barrel by sending 4-6 rounds down it and double-check bullet speeds by radar. It seems she likes to be just a little dirty but not filthy. Mark, Bruce, and Joe mostly wanted to check that their rifles were hitting where they wanted. Meanwhile, John was having difficulty even getting the bullets into a group. Kasey was giving some advice, and John was trying, but it wasn’t working. Finally, Kasey got down behind the rifle and took a few shots. “You have something loose, I don’t know what, but something,” he stated. We started looking the rifle over to find the culprit. As we gathered the tools needed to take the rifle apart, John proclaimed, “Well, I’ll be damned, bet that the problem is right there.” As we gathered around, he pointed to the bipod mount on the forehand of the rifle. And there it was, a large crack in the stock right where the pic rail holding the bipod bolted to the stock. As John lifted it up, it simply fell off in his hand. That’s another reason I’ve never been a fan of fiberglass stocks. Short of a new stock, his shoot was over before it started. We all felt terrible for him, but there was little that we could do. Let’s face it, who carries an extra stock with them? If any of us had one, he would have certainly been welcome to it. Something most will find odd about the competition shooting community, nearly all of us want to see people do well and will loan equipment and give advice to help anyone to succeed. Ultimately, we are-

~by Chad Kinyon

-all just competing against ourselves, the range, and the weather to be better than we were before. You can’t control what others do, so concentrate on your job, and your scores will reflect it. Satisfied with the rounds we had shot at 100 yards, we moved up to where the competition would take place the following day to see if there was anything we could do to lend a hand. Upon arrival, we found Stanley Cutsforth and Terry Fisher feverishly clearing tall grass off the firing line with a line trimmer. The firing line consisted of two wide black rubber belts staked to the ground. These worked to keep the muzzle blast from kicking up too much dust. Carpets were then rolled out over the belts and staked down for the shooters to lay on as +95% of shooters shoot from the prone position. We all pitched in, and the majority of the prep was done in short order. The only task left was to give the targets a fresh coat of paint. Who wants to get some lunch?

A side note to the current subject that you will thank me for later. If you are ever in Hermiston, OR, and looking for some delicious food, Nookies is the place to go. We ventured there on a local recommendation from John. The food was fabulous. I had a prime rib french dip sandwich, and it was, hands down, the best I’ve ever had in my 54 years. The flavor was out of this world, and portion was perfect in that I wasn’t overly full, yet I was full to the point that I didn’t want anything more. The rest of my tribe had half-pound burgers of various types that looked delicious, and they all seemed very happy and quite full and content.

“What do you guys want to do now?” I asked. “Let’s go find the local gun/sporting goods stores and see if they got anything good,” chimed Mark. So, off we went to stimulate the local economy. We drove a short distance to Pendleton, OR, to a little mom-and-pop shop called Garner’s Sporting Goods on a recommendation from Terry Fisher. That was where we met Rick and Tammy Hadden, the owners and operators. Super nice folks that greeted a mob of out-of-towners like they were family, as soon as I told them Terry had sent us. I love these kinds of places. We wandered around that small store for probably an hour or so while each of us formed a pile at the check-stand. Everyone found something they had been looking for but couldn’t seem to get their hands on back home. We got things we needed for ourselves and friends back home, while at the same time, supporting the little guy trying to make a living. After that adventure, I needed a nap. The rest of that afternoon we spent reviewing data and trying to predict how the weather would affect the event the following day. It became evident quickly that wind of 30+ mph would separate the men from the boys in relatively short order. We were sitting in the lobby area of the hotel, and everyone’s phone went off simultaneously, and we all went directly to the message from Kasey. The firing order-

-came out via group text message. It’s a funny analogy, but it reminded me of scenes in the movies where a military unit is notified of a current situation and is called in for deployment. Not the same thing, in any way, just that it’s what it reminded me of. We knew where we would fall in the firing order; Mark was first, and I was second in the heavy gun division. Joe and Bruce were second and fourth in the light gun. Experience told me it was the time to make my final plans. If you don’t think of these things beforehand and form a solid plan, your mind will be up all night trying to do it for you. Once you make your plan, it’s time to put it to rest and get some shut-eye.

4/9/22 05:00 The morning of the match started with what I would call cautious optimism. The heavy breakfast we had the day before was replaced by cereal and a piece of fruit. Not sure why we all did that, but it was an interesting observation. We all felt we were in control of our equipment and abilities, but the weather became the major player, acting up like a screaming child. When we arrived at the range, the weather guessers had nailed it. It was cold, in the mid 40s, and the wind was howling from right to left in relation to the range. This combination would quickly chill most of us right to the bone when exposed to it for much time. As I stood at the rear door of my pickup, assembling my rifle from travel packing into shooting configuration, I sensed someone walk up behind me. I turned to find John-standing there with a big grin. “I’m back in this thing,” he proclaimed. As it turned out, they had taken his stock back to Stan’s shop and put some farmer engineering into it. They had mixed up a batch of JB Weld and stuck the bipod mount back on. It looked like a first-rate fix-it job to me. I tried to get him to throw a couple of zip ties on it just for visual effect, but he wouldn’t go for it. Like I said before, we will always rise to help our tribe. After a quick safety briefing and explaining how the event would run, the firing line went hot. From this point on, if we weren’t inside a vehicle getting warm, we better have hearing protection on. The scoring would use the King of 2 Miles scoring system. First-round hits carry the most weight and would be 5X the distance, second-round hits would be 4X distances, and so on, with the least valuable, fifth-round being 1X distance. I honestly believe this is the fairest scoring model at this time. We would shoot two distances and five rounds at each target with a time limit of four minutes for all ten rounds. The heavy gun class would shoot targets at 1798, 1937, 2143, 2300, 2503, 2810, 3381, and 3556. My windage turret would be maxed out by the 2143 target. After that, I would be using that fancy tape measure in the scope reticle to hold off. My elevation turret hit the stops at 2810 yards. I knew this would happen during the planning stage the day before. Mark Miller had offered to let me use his Nightforce Prism Wedge for the final two targets.

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A prism bends the line of sight from the scope, adding a pre-set amount of elevation. You might think the image would be distorted, but you’d be mistaken. The image was just as crisp and clear with the Wedge Prism as without it. The borrowed equipment was the 50 moa/14.5 mil version. That meant I would still have an additional 7 mill hold over at 3381 and a 14.5 mil holdover at 3556 yards (2 miles). I wrote these numbers on my hand with a Sharpie along with the additional wind holds. I thought, I really have got to get one of these prism things, but in the 29 mil version. That would be better for the way my rifle is set up. Shortly after the lunch break, my new tribe member John came up to me and said, “I’m done.” Naturally, I figured the bipod mount had finally failed, but I was mistaken. “My turrets are maxed out, and I can’t dial the next set of targets, and I don’t have enough in my reticle to hold off,” he said with disgust. “Hold on a minute; we aren’t done yet,” I told him. I went on to explain how to use the reticle to find another object to aim at that would allow the bullet to land not where he was aiming but where the target was. I will tell you the same way I explained it to him. We were standing on the ramp of Stan’s toy hauler at the time, so I used it as an example. “Say you needed to measure this ramp, but you only have a three-foot tape measure; how would you go about it?” I asked with a grin. “Well, you’d measure out the first 3 feet and then make a mark, move the tape and measure the remainder,” he explained. “How is using your reticle any different?” I asked. “Just use that very expensive tape measure to move your reticle onto something substantial that takes the elevation and wind into account and aim at that. You don’t have to actually aim at the desired target, you just need to hit it,” I explained. I could literally see the light come on as a big grin spread across his face, and he proclaimed, “I’m back in this thing!” Off he went to form a plan. The wind couldn’t make up its mind, blowing between 8-35+ mph, making it really challenging to calculate the wind drift. Bullet drop is reasonably straightforward as it is the constant force of gravity, which can be calculated. One can only guess at a variable wind. So, for this day’s event, the best wind guesser would probably prevail. I won’t go into hits and misses because that would get tedious and boring. I had a slight bump in my path when I had a case head separation on the first shot at 2143 yards. If you don’t know, that’s when the case head separates from the rest of the casing, leaving it stuck in the chamber. As you can imagine, that can be tricky to remove. Drawing on my MBA in “Figure It Out” and a Ph.D. in “Common Sense” (advanced degrees my sister gave me), I took a cleaning rod and stuck it down the barrel from the muzzle end. I then attached a 20 gauge shotgun brass brush to the rod.Then taking a firm hold on the rod, gave it a yank back up into the chamber. This caused the brush bristles to go up into the stuck case with no head. Now that the bristles were in the case, it was time for them to change directions by smacking the handle end of the cleaning rod. The bristles expanded upon changing directions, grabbing the case, and popping it right out. Success, and I was back in the fight. When the dust cleared, I wound up getting second place with my 375 EnABELR, 6,414 points behind Mark Miller and his 460 Styer. He made a third-round impact on the two-mile target, worth 7112 points, and that made the difference. A very impressive feat, to say the least. My first shot at that same two-mile target went left by seven mills, with my fifth shot being my closest but missed by 8 “-10” off the top right corner. Mark was really on his game that day. We were the only two shooters with impacts past 2810 yards. Kasey Jones took the third-place spot with a 416 Hellfire, a rifle he had literally put together two days prior to the shoot. To be honest, I felt honored to be standing there with the second-place plaque, getting my picture taken with two top-tier shooters that I respect more than I have words. Maybe, just maybe, this small-town kid from Genesee, Idaho, will get the chance to rub elbows with the best of the best in this beloved sport. Along the way, I will make more life-long friends, and perhaps, I can help out some more shooters like John, or even you, for that matter, who are just getting started in the wonderful sport.

•Best of the West ELR match chalks up 31,343 KO2M points, for anyone keeping score.

•Hopefully, our next stop will be Spearpoint Ranch in Lincoln, Kansas, in mid-June.

•Current Global ELR Ranking 167th and on the move.

Author’s note: After seeing firsthand the failings of an adjustable scope base, like an Ivey, I can no longer confidently recommend any such device. For additional elevation beyond what the scope turrets allow, the best option is a prism mounted to a rail in front of the scope.